Naked Empire

Other men, too, looked to be stricken with horror. Some had to lower themselves to the ground as Owen had. Others, their faces in their hands, turned away, or walked off a few paces.

"What do you mean?" Richard asked.

Owen looked up, his face ashen. "The story I told you about our land

… about our town and the other great cities? How in my town we all lived together and were happy with our lives?" Richard nodded. "Not all were."

Kahlan crossed her arms and leaned toward Owen. "What do you mean, not all were?"

Owen lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. "Some wanted more than our simple joyful life. Some people… well, they wanted to change things. They said they wanted to make things better. They wanted to improve our life, to build places for themselves, even though this is against our ways."

"Owen is right," an older man said in a grim tone. "In my time I have seen a great many of these people who were unable to endure what some called the chafing principles of our empire."

"And what happened when people wanted to make these changes, or could not endure the principles of your empire?" Richard asked.

Owen looked to each side, to the other dispirited faces. "The great speakers renounced their ideas. The Wise One said they would only bring strife among us. Their hopes for new ways were turned aside and they were denounced." Owen swallowed. "So these people decided they would leave.

Bandakar. They went out of our land, taking the path through the opening in the boundary, to find a new life for themselves. Not a single one ever returned to us."

Richard wiped a hand across his face. "Then they died looking for their new life, a better life than what you had to offer."

"But you don't understand." Owen rose to his feet. "We are like those people." He swept his arm back at his men. "We have refused to go back and give ourselves over to the men of the Order, even though we know that people are being tortured because we hide. We know it will not stop the Order, so we don't go back.

"We have gone against the wishes of our great speakers, and the Wise One, to try to save our people. We have been denounced for what we choose to do. We have gone out of the pass to seek information, to find a way to rid ourselves of the Imperial Order. Do you see? We are much the same as those others throughout our history. Like those others, we chose to leave and try to change things rather than to endure the way things were."

"Then perhaps you are beginning to see," Richard said, "that everything you were taught showed you only how to embrace death, not life. Perhaps you see that what you called the teaching of enlightenment was no more than blinders pulled over your eyes."

Richard put his hand on Owen's shoulder. He gazed down at the statue of himself in his other hand and then looked around at the tense faces.

"You men are the ones left after all the rest have failed the tests.

You alone got this far. You alone have started to use your minds to try to find a solution for you and your loved ones. You have much more to learn, but you have at least started to make some of the right choices. You must not stop now; you must meet with courage what I will call upon you to do, if you are to truly have a chance to save your loved ones."

For the first time they looked at least a little proud. They had been recognized, not for how well they repeated meaningless sayings, but for the decisions they reached on their own.

Jennsen was frowning in thought. "Richard, why couldn't people get back in through the passage out through the boundary? If they wanted to go off and have a new life but then discovered that they would have to go through the Pillars of Creation, why wouldn't they go back, at least to get supplies, to get what they needed so they could make it through?"

"That's right," Kahlan said. "George Cypher went through the boundary at Kings' Port and then returned. Adie said that the boundary had to have a passage, a vent, like where these people banished criminals, so why couldn't people come back in? There was a pass out, so why did they never return?"

The men nodded, curious to hear why no one ever came back.

"From the first, I've wondered the same thing." Richard rubbed a thumb along the glossy black surface of the statue of himself. "I think that the boundaries in the Midlands had to have an opening through them because they were so big-so long. This boundary, here, is nothing compared to those; I doubt that the same kind of vent would be needed.

"Because it was just one bent section of a boundary and not very long, I suspect that Kaja-Rang was able to put in a pass that allowed criminals to be banished through it, but would not allow passage back in. After all, if a criminal was banished and found he couldn't escape, he would return.

Kaja-Rang wouldn't have wanted that to happen."

"How could such a thing work?" Jennsen asked.